


Another Forty Yards

by BrynnaRaven



Category: Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Comfort, Drama & Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 20:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30044124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrynnaRaven/pseuds/BrynnaRaven
Summary: One-shot, Fort William Henry. As Nathaniel, Uncas, and the Colonial militia prepare to send Munro's courier to Fort Edward to request reinforcements, and the militia subsequently plans to leave the fort to protect their families, Nathaniel is also deep in thought about the piece of blue silk he carries with him for shooting patches, and his feelings for the woman who gave it to him.
Relationships: Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo/Cora Munro
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Another Forty Yards

_Another forty yards…_ Nathaniel Poe crouched in the dark with his brother Uncas and Jack Winthrop behind the sally port facing the edge of the forest. He touched the strip of sky blue silk damask tied to his powder horn strap, feeling the thickness of it and the fine, raised patterns in the weave catching on his callused fingertips. A few other militiamen stood by with their rifles in hand, the courier readying himself to make his deadly journey.

“Munro refused to believe what happened?” Jack questioned Nathaniel with contempt and disbelief in his voice.

“He does not even want to hear it,” Nathaniel affirmed, pouring powder into the muzzle of his prized longrifle, Killdeer. He raised his knife and cut off a small square of the silk, rubbing a bit of bear grease onto it before centering it over the muzzle and setting a lead ball on top of it. With a forceful push, he shoved it the rest of the way down the barrel with the ramrod. “But he’s gonna have to.” He pulled the ramrod out and set the loaded rifle aside, accepting another gun from one of the men to load it the same way. He and Uncas would need a number of ready weapons to fire back-to-back shots and ensure the courier made it past the outlying skirmishers on his way to Fort Edward. He listened as Jack sent a man to gather several others by the west bastion and wait for them, to take a larger presence and try a second time to sway Colonel Munro’s heart in favor of their families once this task had been accomplished.

“Tight weave?” Uncas inquired as Nathaniel jammed the lead ball and patch partway into the muzzle with his thumb, then sent it down to the barrel’s breech with a grunt and a white-knuckled grip on the ramrod.

“Silk. Another forty yards,” he answered, pouring powder into the priming pan and readying himself to cover the courier the moment he would make a run for it from the sally port. _Another forty yards…_ That estimate was hopeful at best, but even another fifteen or twenty yards’ distance could be the difference between life and death for the man who carried the fate of Fort William Henry rolled up in his haversack. The fate of Fort William Henry…the fate of the Colonial militia…and the fate of the woman who had given him leave to take said silk, left from her tattered and muddied petticoat that had been washed as clean as it would come and repurposed for bandages in the fort’s overcrowded surgery.

There was a burst of activity as Nathaniel pushed his thoughts aside and gave the signal that he and Uncas were ready. The courier made a dash out the sally port and ran hell-bent-for-leather to the forest. For those few minutes, nothing crossed Nathaniel’s mind except what lay in the sights of each gun he and his brother fired, one volley after another to keep the brave man’s path clear of danger. _Another forty yards…_ Nathaniel took the final and longest shot with Killdeer, a burst of relief spreading through his chest when the ball met its mark and the courier could be seen disappearing into the trees without further interruption. Soon the men left to gather some of those Jack had asked for earlier, and moved on back to Munro’s office. Unfortunately the meeting was for naught. Once again their valid argument was futile in the overwhelmed Colonel’s eyes. He would not release the militia as General Webb had promised Jack in Albany, and the Major’s dishonesty about the scene at the Camerons’ cabin clinched his decision. Nathaniel and the others were filled with impotent rage as they filed out and went back to the west bastion where the rest of the group waited to hear what had transpired.

Nathaniel touched the length of silk again as they walked, allowing his thoughts to wander to Cora Munro once more, and feeling calmer as they did. At first he had held the haughty presence of her and her blue silk in patronizing contempt; on the road after the attack, and then later at the waterfall when she had only glared at him in judgmental silence while he set the Major to rights, and he had assumed she was just like him. Then at the Camerons’ farm when she had finally spoken directly to him, only to lay her gross misunderstanding of the situation upon him in a way that had stopped him in his tracks and made him walk the distance back to where she stood. The fire of his grief had been far plainer than the anger he wanted her to see in that moment, but he could not staunch it. Except unlike the Major, there had been a heartbroken dawning of comprehension in her eyes when he enlightened her, and even knowing she was wrong she had not looked away from him, but instead let him see her. And unlike the Major, she had come to him in the dark and tried to understand better, and then apologized. He had thought that would be the end of it, but then she surprised him by staying, hunkering down on the forest floor beside him without a care for that sky blue silk. She had softened as the initial apprehension in their conversation gave way to banter that was almost playful, and he was pleased to find that she had a thick skin and gave as good as she got. It shouldn’t have given him such pleasure to find he’d been so wrong about her at first glance, but the moment she had pulled a pistol out of the pocket beneath her petticoat when the French regulars and Ottawa had nearly discovered them, he was done trying to tell himself there was nothing about her to like.

And after…her soft, prying questions that he ought not have cared to answer, but the earnest glimmer of her dark eyes made him want to tell her the truth because he knew then that she could handle the truth. Her acceptance of his answers and the way she seemed to quietly mull all this new information over in her sharp, quick-witted mind. How she leaned on one elbow, relaxing beside him on the damp carpet of leaves and pine needles, and he began to see her; not what he had thought she would be, but what she was. Reaching for any reason to keep her from leaving, he had told her a story about the stars, wondering if she would have any real understanding of anything he’d told her so far. She seemed to want everything he gave, though. There was no true fear in her for any of this unfamiliar place, and then came her soft confession. _“It is more deeply stirring to my blood…than any imagining could possibly have been.”_ He could see the momentary widening of her eyes, surprised at her own directness but not shrinking from it. She had shifted her position then and laid down on the ground, Nathaniel’s pulse quickening with the realization that she would be sleeping at his side…and that he wanted her to. She was turned over on her side and he had at last allowed himself to look at the entirety of her. The curve of her shoulder and hip, the dip of her waistline, their covering of blue silk illuminated by the moon and stars above, the white threads of the damask images picked out by their discerning light. The mud streaked across the petticoat. The top two buttons of her jacket lying open, and the rip at the cap of her left shoulder with the fine white linen shift showing underneath. The fact that he was suddenly so aware of all these things, and the fact that he had to talk himself out of reaching over to brush a fallen lock of her dark hair from her cheek when he found himself irrationally wanting to.

Nathaniel had been acutely aware of Cora’s presence in the doorway behind him just moments ago, too, as he and Jack and Uncas had argued with her father. She hadn’t said a word, her keen mind taking all of this in to judge the situation for herself as he now knew her to be utterly capable of doing. From the corner of his eye he had seen and felt the disgusted disappointment that crossed her lovely face at the conclusion, noted the tears in her eyes when she knew once and for all the kind of man desperation for numbers had turned her father into, and the Major’s true colors. She was gone before Heyward had threatened him, and even in his anger he had longed to follow her, to comfort her even as he despised her father’s refusal to uphold General Webb’s agreement. She was not her father. She was not the Major. She appeared to have chosen a side, and it was not theirs.

He turned his attention back to the group awaiting them as they approached their meeting place, the men’s hopeful faces falling when Jack and Nathaniel shook their heads to indicate the lack of success. They crouched in the firelit shadows together, making a new plan. Those with families would leave, those without would stay. It had come to this; what the Colonel referred to as sedition, but what these men saw only as the best chance to save their own families from the Camerons’ fate.

“I’ll cover you from the bastion,” Nathaniel said, after giving his friends their best escape route from the fort.

“You’re not coming with us?” Jack questioned, surprised.

“I’ve got a reason to stay.” Nathaniel looked at his friend, his choice final in that moment, and Jack seemed to understand his meaning. Likely he had seen her in the office doorway, too.

“Does that reason wear a striped skirt and work in the surgery?” Jack teased with a crooked smile.

“It does,” Nathaniel confirmed with a good-natured smirk at his friend. “And no offense, but it’s a better lookin’ reason than you, Jack Winthrop.” The others snickered at that, and Nathaniel gave them final instructions before the group parted ways. Ongewasgone and his Mohawk warriors would stay, too, and Nathaniel hoped he would not lose too many of them in this futile battle. Hopefully the others would make it out of here without getting caught. Hopefully the courier would get through, and Webb would send reinforcements before it was too late. _Another forty yards…_

He stood with his eyes closed and touched the silk again, seeing the images woven into it as he ran his fingertips over their rougher texture. Birds and flowers, he remembered, having noted the details stealing glances at Cora on the journey here. Certainly finer fabric than he’d touched in a long time, let alone used for shooting patches. It might have been the courier’s salvation though, and maybe his own too, in a strange way. He felt a stab of regret that he had never touched it while it lay against her skin. It never would again. Sky blue silk had been replaced by a utilitarian striped linen skirt and an apron now spattered with blood, as if the decadent fabric and the proper-looking lady so out of place in the wilderness had never existed. And perhaps she never really had; Phelps had informed him that she’d been his surgery assistant since girlhood, and watching her work had allowed him to see that she was in her element there, with her collected demeanor and the competence and courage that seemed to flow from her once he had begun to get the true measure of her that first night. There was an extraordinary rightness about her, something inside her that told him she belonged here, and he sensed that she knew it as much as he did.

Her indomitable spirit had seemed to slowly invade him from that point on, and had made him reckless, bold. Bold enough to admit to her face that he was looking at her in the surgery room when she’d stitched Uncas and given him the silk. He had _wanted_ her to know, wanted to see if her wide dark eyes would show him that she felt what he did, and he had not been disappointed. Bold enough, or perhaps stupid enough, to stay behind for no other reason than the hope that he might be able to save her in the end, because the thought of anything happening to her now seemed unbearable when he tried to imagine anything extinguishing her fiery soul and the quiet bloom of solace it gave him. Nathaniel wanted that near him, wanted _her_ near him. He had somehow gotten wrapped up in a situation he and his family had tried like hell to avoid, and she was the silver lining no matter how it all ended. He wanted Cora Munro, against all odds. His reason to come here, and his reason to stay. He couldn’t follow her earlier, but he would find her now, find a way to tell her everything, and hope that she would understand. He swung Killdeer around into his hand as he walked toward the surgery, his pulse like a war drum in his chest. The doorway loomed ahead, and suddenly Cora was there in it, framed by the darkness behind her and illuminated by the firelight on the parade ground in front. What she would leave behind her and the unknown of what lay before her. She looked around until she spotted him there, and he saw the flood of relief on her face even from across the courtyard. He felt the same relief when she began to walk toward him, their faces showing their emotions plain as day as they closed the distance between them. _Another forty yards…_

At last she stood before him, aglow in the firelight. Her shimmering eyes left his for just a moment and took in the strip of blue silk tied to the wampum strap; a visual reminder of what was between them, how they were bound together by fate. There was no turning back now. When her gaze returned to his, he knew she felt it all too, and that they were both done fighting it. He could see in her the effect of the last several days, of what had happened earlier, and her need for comfort in spite of her resilience. He needed it too, and there was nowhere else to find it in the world but in each other. No words were needed for it, so instead he reached for her hand. The warmth of her trembling palm pressed against his as their fingers twined together, and he led her away toward the bastion where he would cover the militia in an hour’s time – an hour he would gladly spend with her before everything changed for them again. A breeze blew across the parade ground, fluttering the strip of blue silk upward against the bare skin at the opening of his shirt, just below where his heart beat for the woman who had worn it.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note:
> 
> Well, it’s not the next chapter of Crazy Faith (which I swear is also being worked on), but I had this revelation last week that I couldn’t get out of my head and it was begging to be a one-shot. In all the numerous hundreds of times I’ve watched LOTM, it took me until that day to notice that when Nathaniel met with Cora on the parade ground just before they kissed, he had a strip of her blue silk dress tied to his wampum powder horn strap – the silk he asked her for in the surgery scene that led to the famous “another forty yards” exchange in the courier scene. I have no idea why I never saw it before, but once I did Nathaniel was beating down my door for a short story about it. Firstly as a person who shoots flintlock, I’ll dispel existing myth and tell you that the “another forty yards” thing is just so not true, and was some fantastical BS Michael Mann probably dreamed up. It IS true that a thicker and more tightly woven patch will gain you some distance and better accuracy, but only to a point. And not forty yards. Maybe ten or fifteen. So I couldn’t resist mentioning that. As for the silk itself, the logical part of my brain knows exactly why Nathaniel would have tied it there: it was easy to access so he could cut patches repeatedly as he loaded the guns in preparation to clear the line for Munro’s courier (and really, can I just say, watch that scene and just appreciate how he and Uncas operate together there, taking care of business like the BAMFs they are and being sexy AF). But the squishy romantic part of my heartbrain also felt like Nathaniel would have left it there because he’s also fallen hard for Cora, and it reminds him of her. She kind of upended his world the same as he did to her, and I just had to write about his mental relationship to that piece of silk.  
> There is another undercurrent of suggestion in here as well that I didn’t expect, but it came anyway. I watched the courier and following scenes several times back to back to make sure I had the sequence of events correct for this story, and in doing so I started to think. Jack told the men who were leaving to be back there in an hour, and Nathaniel said he’d cover them from the bastion. He then immediately goes and finds Cora, and we all know that he took her up on the bastion and kissed her, and from the looks of it she was up there with him for a while. So then I started wondering…did she know about all of it? If he covered them when they ran, Cora would have very likely been up there with him, right? It’s plausible that she left him before that, but anything is possible. She was so angry at Duncan, and at her father, because she understood both sides of the issue and wanted the frontier families safe. I feel like she may have known that those men left, that this might have been the final act to tie her to Nathaniel and show her support of him and the Colonials. She just about said as much later, when she went off on Colonel Munro and Duncan after Nathaniel was arrested. I felt like it wasn’t a far reach to think she knew, and while I didn’t directly mention in in the text here, the implication is there. It’s something interesting to think about, and certainly good fodder for fanfiction.  
> I hope you all enjoyed this one-shot, and that you’ll leave even a short comment to let me know your thoughts and opinions. Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
